RED HAT ENTERPRISE VIRTUALIZATION:

A FEATURE COMPARISON
DATASHEET

RED HAT INTRODUCTION

ENTERPRISE
VIRTUALIZATION When choosing a virtualization platform for your datacenter, your architecture and capabilities
AT A GLANCE can be limited by product features.
Red Hat This datasheet helps you easily compare features and benefits across Red Hat
Enterprise Virtualization Enterprise Virtualization, VMware vSphere 5.5, and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. It
is the only fully open demonstrates that Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization features match their competition for the core
source, enterprise-ready functionality required with an enterprise virtualization solution—at a cost that is 50-80% less than
virtualization platform. VMware vSphere.1

And unlike VMware and Microsoft’s virtualization solutions, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization
Compare the
features are available through a single, simple subscription and its functionality is not segmented
functionality of Red Hat
into multiple editions. Therefore, customers do not have to buy add-on products for
Enterprise Virtualization to
additional functionality.
VMware and Microsoft. Decide
for yourself which solution is
FEATURES RED HAT VMWARE MICROSOFT
best for your use case. ENTERPRISE VSPHERE 5.5 HYPER-V 2012
VIRTUALIZATION
Consult the Red Hat HYPERVISOR
Enterprise Virtualization
competitive pricing guide at Bare-metal hypervisor can be Y Y Y
www.redhat.com/virtualization installed directly on the server
for information on pricing. hardware without a full
operating system.

Small footprint of <200MB Y Y N

Guest device drivers are Y Y Y, Red Hat

optimized for virtualization, Enterprise Linux
resulting in high performance guests require
network and disk operations. installation of the
Linux integration
services.

Certified on all hardware Y Y Y

certified for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, including
the latest Intel Xeon and AMD
Opteron chipsets

facebook.com/redhatinc
@redhatnews 1 Consult the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization competitive pricing guide on www.redhat.com/virtualization for
linkedin.com/company/red-hat information on pricing.

redhat.com
 “With Red Hat FEATURES RED HAT VMWARE MICROSOFT
ENTERPRISE VSPHERE 5.5 HYPER-V 2012
Enterprise Virtualization, VIRTUALIZATION
Red Hat has done SCALABILITY LIMITS
in five years what some
Per cluster
of the industry
Cluster 200 32 64
leaders have taken
10, 11, or 12 years to Per host

accomplish. Red Hat Max cores per host 160 160 160
Enterprise Virtualization Max RAM per host 3TB/host 4TB/host 4TB/host
is a product that
Max virtual CPUs per host No limit 4,096 2,048
just works.”
Per virtual machine (VM)
FREDY HERNANDEZ
SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR, STYLMARK Max vCPUs per VM 160 vCPU/VM 32 vCPU with 64 vCPUs/VM for
Standard or Win2012, Win2008,
Enterprise Edition and Win 7

64 vCPU with 32 vCPUs/VM for

Enterprise Plus Linux requires the
Edition installation of the
new Linux integra-
tion services

Max vRAM per VM 2TB/VM 1TB/VM 1TB/VM

GUEST OPERATING SYSTEM SUPPORT

Guest operating system support Windows Server Windows, Linux, Windows 2003,
2003, 2008, 2010, UNIX x86 and x64 2008, 2012 (certain
2012, Windows XP, SPs only) Windows
7, and 8 (32-bit and Windows XP, Vista, XP, Vista, 7, and 8
64 bit) 7, and 8
SLES
Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 3, 4, Red Hat
5, 6 (x86 and x64) Enterprise Linux 5+,
Red Hat
Vendor support Enterprise Linux 6+
for SUSE Linux (certain releases only)
Enterprise Server
10, 11

Other operating
systems are
known to work and
are community
supported.

redhat.com DATASHEET Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization: A feature comparison 2

 FEATURES RED HAT VMWARE MICROSOFT
ENTERPRISE VSPHERE 5.5 HYPER-V 2012
VIRTUALIZATION

MEMORY MANAGEMENT

Memory overcommitment: Y Y Y, dynamic memory

Allows the allocation of more only available with
virtual memory to its VMs than some Microsoft
the host has physical memory operating systems

Memory page sharing: Y Y N

Enables VMs with similar
operating systems to share
physical memory

Transparent huge pages: Y Y N

Large memory pages can be
dynamically created for VMs
that require them

MANAGEMENT FEATURES

High availability

VM restart in case of host failure Y Y Y

Restart order can be prioritized, Y Y Y

allowing the most critical VMs to
be restarted first

No single point of failure for Y Y Y

high availability

Maintenance mode: Guest VMs of Y Y Y

hosts undergoing maintenance
are automatically migrated to
other available hosts

High availability for enterprise Y Y Y

management module: Automatic
fail over to stand-by manage-
ment server in the event of a
primary server failure

MIGRATION

VM live migration Y Y Y

Storage live migration Y Y, requires Y

Enterprise or
Enterprise Plus

redhat.com DATASHEET Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization: A feature comparison 3

 FEATURES RED HAT VMWARE MICROSOFT
ENTERPRISE VSPHERE 5.5 HYPER-V 2012
VIRTUALIZATION

WORKLOAD AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

System scheduler: Cluster Y Y, requires Y

policies automatically distribute Enterprise or
workload evenly across cluster Enterprise Plus
host servers.

Power saver: During off-peak Y Y, requires Y

hours, concentrates VMs on Enterprise or
fewer hosts to save power Enterprise Plus

Storage load balancing: Y Y, requires Y

AAutomatically balance storage Enterprise Plus
I/O and storage capacity

Shared resource pools: Y Y Y

CPU, memory, and storage
resources are aggregated and
managed at the cluster level.

Hot add VM NICs, Disk: Add Y Y, requires Y

networks and disk storage to Enterprise or
running VMs Enterprise Plus

Hot add VM vCPUs and RAM: N Y, requires N

Add more vCPUs and RAM to Enterprise or
running VM (guest operating Enterprise Plus
system and application must
support feature)

IMAGE MANAGEMENT

Thin provisioning: Virtual disks Y Y Y

don’t use all of their allowed
space upon creation.

Templates: VMs can be deployed Y Y Y

from master installations.

VM snapshots: Roll back Y Y Y

patches and upgrades

Live VM snapshots: Y Y Y
Snapshot a running VM

Import/export VMs in the Y Y Y

standard OVF format

redhat.com DATASHEET Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization: A feature comparison 4

 FEATURES RED HAT VMWARE MICROSOFT
ENTERPRISE VSPHERE 5.5 HYPER-V 2012
VIRTUALIZATION

VM conversion: Includes tools to Y Y Y

convert VMs from other formats
to native format

VM backup: Certified third- Y Y Y

party solutions are available for
backing up virtual servers (for
both data and operating system
backup).

SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION AND CONTROL

Single view for centralized Y Y N, requires multiple

control management tools

Host and VM system monitoring Y Y Y

and management

Self service user portal: Provides Y N, requires Y, limited capability

administrative access to users purchase of VMware through SC2012 App
for creating/running VMs and Lab Manager depre- Controller
managing the environment cated or vCloud
Director with
Enterprise Plus

Roles and permissions: Granular, Y Y N, requires

inheritable, directory-based Authorization
security roles for all actions Manager
and objects

Identity management: User Y, choice of Active Y Y, AD only

authentication domains directory, IPA,
supported Red Hat Directory
Services, or IBM
Tivoli Directory
Server

Remote console: Red Hat Y Y Y

Enterprise Virtualization
Manager includes access to VMs
using a secure graphical console

Remote network boot via PXE Y Y Y

(Preboot Execution Environment)

redhat.com DATASHEET Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization: A feature comparison 5

 “ The overall FEATURES RED HAT
ENTERPRISE
VMWARE
VSPHERE 5.5
MICROSOFT
HYPER-V 2012
cost of the Red Hat VIRTUALIZATION
Enterprise Virtualization REPORTING AND MONITORING
implementation in
Provides customizable reporting Y N, Requires vCenter Y, Limited
the US was just over for historic usage, trending, and CapacityIQ
half the cost of an quality of service
equivalent VMware Alerts and notifications: Errors Y Y Y
project the UK and warnings are immediately
incurred. With this reported to administrators
via email
implementation, we
managed to reduce Logging: Supports remote Y Y Y
logging and crash analysis
the number of servers
by more than 75% Guest agents: Enables moni- Y Y Y
toring of VM health and status
while saving 50% on
software licensing and INTEGRATION, AUTOMATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION

maintenance costs.”
ROBIN PORTER,
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER,
QURU
API: Programmatic access to all Y, all open N, some proprie- N, some proprietary/
management commands tary/closed, closed, some open
some open
Scripting and automation of Y, Linux Y, Powershell-based Y, Powershell-based
management commands Python-based CLI CLI CLI

Hooks: Used to run system com. Y Y, Limited N

mands or to execute scripts that
modify VM operation

“ Red Hat SECURITY

Enterprise Virtualization Kernel level: Includes SELinux Y N, application layer N, application layer
lets us get the job and sVirt for an effective security with add-on security
intrusion detection, isolation, vShield products
done without any
and containment
system downtime,
Small hypervisor footprint Y Y Y
which helps us maintain
minimizes attack surface
service levels and
NETWORKING
lighten the burden of
system operation. Device support: All network Y Y Y
hardware and interfaces
SHIGETOSHI NAKAMURA are certified for Red Hat
INFORMATION SYSTEMS GROUP,
ABC COOKING STUDIO Enterprise Linux.

vLANs: Support for virtual Y Y Hyper-V Network

LANs are inside the virtual Virtualization
infrastructure.

redhat.com DATASHEET Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization: A feature comparison 6

 FEATURES RED HAT VMWARE MICROSOFT
ENTERPRISE VSPHERE 5.5 HYPER-V 2012
VIRTUALIZATION

Support for OpenStack Y, Supports N, Only supports Y, Supports

Neutron networking OpenvSwitch and VMware NSX 3 OpenvSwitch4
Linux Bridge 2

Network offload: Offloads virtual Y Y Y

networking and network I/O to
compatible NIC hardware

Supports jumbo frames Y Y Y

STORAGE

Supports iSCSI, FC, and NFS Y Y Y

shared storage infrastructure

Includes native support for Y N N

Red Hat Storage Server,
including a built-in GlusterFS
Storage domain and datacenter
type that use Gluster as the
storage back-end

Storage multipathing: Y Y Y
Redundant path to storage
for fault tolerance and
enhanced performance

Local disk support Y Y Y

Supports storage domains Y Y Y

backed by POSIX-compliant file
systems

Shared disks: Includes disks that Y Y Y

are shared by multiple VMs at the
same time

Direct LUN support: Provides Y Y Y

the ability to directly attach any
block device to a VM as a disk

2 OpenvSwitch may support VMware NSX (this is subject to testing)

3 VMware NSX is a proprietary lock-in solution
4 Support is from a 3rd party (cloudbase) not Microsoft official support

redhat.com DATASHEET Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization: A feature comparison 7

DATASHEET Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization: A feature comparison
LEARN MORE
For more information,
access www.redhat.com/rhev
or contact your local
Red Hat reseller.
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DOC 146080
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
All information in this datasheet concerning Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization was accurate as of
December 2013. Reference the release notes for your installed version.
All information concerning products from other manufacturers was taken from publicly available
materials as of December 2013 with no warranty as to its accuracy. Please check manufacturers’
websites for the latest information and specification on their products.
The competitive data for VMware vSphere 5.5 and Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V were
gathered from publicly available data from each manufacturer. This data is not guaranteed by
Red Hat is and subject to change.
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